Boat skins
Customizing the look of your sails and your hull is great way of making a fashion statement or promoting something near to your heart. You don't need to own an expensive suite of Adobe products to create custom skins. There is free software that can be used to create these skins and there are also community members who seem happy to create skins upon request. Browse Category:Skins and feel free to add more. Creating *Adobe Photoshop *GIMP *Paint Shop Pro *Paint Net Using Download An index of the various boat skins currently available can be found at Category:Skins. To allow for user feedback and/or discussion, each skin has it's own dedicated wiki article. Please use the Discussion tab at top right of the article to make comments about the skin. Please sign your comments with four tildes viz. ~~~~ Here at contributors are asked to upload the .ZIP form of a boat skin and not an auto-installer executable file. This is primarily due to a Wikia-wide upload file size limit of 10MB per file. An auto-installers typically bloats the package size by including polar diagrams, documentation, a collection of compatible skins, a sampling of tracks designed to run the boat through its paces, and so on. It may be very convenient but at this wiki we have an article for each one of those components and ask that you please use a separate upload for skins, tracks and boat models. * This allows community members to describe and discuss individual components at dedicated articles and discussion pages rather than on a page that shares a bundle of skins and tracks along with a boat model. * It also allows semantic data to be annotated to individual components and this will prove powerful as the wiki grows. * A vsk.wikia.com url to the raw boat skin file may be used as a locator file to enhance your multiplayer experience. * The documentation (including polar diagrams) can be uploaded at the boat page using the form provided, esp. the Upload image(s) for gallery: input field. ;Compatible game versions : At the form for creating a new skin page and at Category:Skins you will see reference to 4.5 - 32AC or just 32AC. :Wherever you see 32AC you may assume that it is referring to that game version that came out after VSK4 and before VSK5. :32AC boat models are not compatible with VSK5. See Evolution of VSK for the details. However most 32AC skins are compatible with corresponding VSK5 boat models. :If you apply a patch to 32AC then you now have a VSK5 compatible game client however the installation folder name3 remains as 32nd America's Cup. This has confused many a user. Install * At other web sites boat skins may come as an executable package which uses an installer to place the files in certain default locations on your PC. Those default installation folders are different for each version of the game. Sadly most of the installers are not clever enough to check your existing installed programs to determine which game version you have and auto select the correct folder. So be sure that you check the destination folder before giving the final OK to the installer. Some installers use a language other than english. ;Manual installation : This is not complicated and it is necessary for any boat skins downloaded from the . ::(If you should ever find a .EXE file in any ZIP archive downloaded from then please treat that entire ZIP archive file with suspicion.) # Don't forget to download and install a boat model that is compatible with the new skin. # Quit from your VSK game client. # Verify which version of VSK5 you have. #* If you upgraded/patched 32AC to make it compatible with VSK5 then the correct folder tree is still named 32nd America's Cup #* If you upgraded VSK5Online to make it compatible with VSK5 (not recommended) then the correct folder tree is still named Vsk5Online # Copy the SkinName.zip file to the relevant installation folder below your My Documents folder: #* %UserProfile%\My Documents\'Vsk5'\Skins\Boats #* %UserProfile%\My Documents\'Vsk5Online'\Skins\Boats #* %UserProfile%\My Documents\'32nd America's Cup'\Skins\Boats #** This folder will not exist by default so you must first create it. You must also create one subfolder for each boat model. e.g. Deposit skins for the ACC boat model in ...\Skins\Boats\Acc # The new boat skin will be available when you next launch the game client Note that none of these boat skins are installed to any sub-folder below Program Files. Therefore each user at a PC must install the same boat skins separately. This is a good reason why it may be preferable that one user account with administrator privileges be used to launch the game. Multiple users can launch the game using credentials of that one shared account - learn how at: Run as admin. About boat models The article Boat models explains how to download or create a customized boat model. About the P2P cache As you play online the skins for other boats are downloaded to your PC and stored in a so-called cache folder. (This is why some players experience network lag when racing online.) If the max limit to your cache folder is small (default is 300MB) then you may find that least recently used skins are being purged to make room for newer skins only to be downloaded all over again if a boat using a purged skin returns to your fleet later on! You can easily increase the max-limit on that local cache via the game configuration menu that appears before you authenticate online. See Getting started with VSK5#Configure and especially note figure 5. ; Cache folder : %UserProfile%\..\All Users\Application Data\'Vsk5Online'\Cache :* replace Vsk5Online with Vsk5 or 32nd America's Cup Locator files explained best source may be the VSK-AUS page on this see also Northspace Transparent Opponents See the article, Transparent Opponents, for instructions on how to make transparent the sails on the temporary skin which displays while an opponent's skin is still downloading to your local cache folder. Default Nadeo boat skins These are the skins included with installation of the game. They are for each of the participating nations as well as the teams which participated in the 32nd America's cup. Each one is branded "Nadeo" on the boom and possibly some other places. The sails are not transparent. Users of the free to download and free to play VSK5online may install and view custom skins but your own boat will appear to other skippers as having one of the Nadeo default skins regardless of which skin you have selected and can see on your own display. It's just another incentive for you to pay to uprade to the full VSK5 version. Category:Glossary